Sapphire Class - Highscores?

[jb12]

I just noticed that 9/10 high scores set were done by sapphire class? (and subsequent lower top scores are still set by sapphires classes). Is there a reason why this is so?

[Vachtra]

It's the ship that started the game for one. I use it because it's versatile and what I've always used.
The three starter ships are the only ones that will show up in the high score anyway and only in a vanilla game.

[sun1404]

Maybe because it's the most balanced, and can do pretty well across the entire game. The freighter will have to struggle a bit during the early-mid game, because it's slow and not very maneuverable. In the mid-late game though, it can be very deadly because it'll have lots of money, and be able to equip the best armors, and a lot of other devices. The Wolfen is great all along because it's specially made for fighting, but it'll have trouble making money, and in the late game it'll be somewhat restricted from several devices, and it can't use the best armors. The ability to equip many weapons doesn't help much because you can still fire only one at a time. It only means you can take on more kinds of enemy without needing to dock and change equipments.

Or, it might just be because most of the good players like the Sapphire. While the new players play with the Wolfen for its speed and deadliness, or choose the freighter for its ample cargo hold, the old players who knows the game well choose the Sapphire, maybe because the Wolfen can't keep or equip their favorite items, and the freighter is too slow and doesn't have that one more weapon slot we all need. The Sapphire can equip nearly as much devices as the freighter, and if you want, can equip as much weapons as the Wolfen. Though it's not as fast, the Sapphire can sacrifice one of it's slot for a Thruster, and easily exceeds the Wolfen's speed. (With a Pteracnium Megadrive, you can get .30 or something near that IIRC)

So maybe it's not that the ship can make better score than it's rivals, but that the players who can make such score likes it more.

[Song]

The sapphire is, in skilled hands, the best of the vanilla ships. You can do pretty much anything with it, and can lump a bunch of devices onto it to boost DPS to insane levels. It's also not that hard to start out in compared with the freighter (which sucks in the early game) and isn't all that much worse than the Wolfen. You also start with more cash, which helps a bit when trying to set up for a high-score run. my best run in a sapphire would have made the top 10, but I had the old "avast kills the multiverse" bug, and I've never been able to replicate that run since.